Love, art, war, and heartbreak mark this often engaging finale.
The concluding volume of Peake’s (The Sun Sets Twice: Book Two, 2018, etc.) narrative recounts brutality and heroism during World War I.
It’s August 1914, and American artist Jennie Latmore has now been living in France for 14 years. Following the loss of her lover, Geste D’Arcourt, who was a passenger on the Titanic, she moved into Suzanne de Lamothe’s house in Paris. The two women care for 8-year-old Lorelei Clark; her English father, Charlie, brought her back to Paris as an infant after his young wife, Marta, died, and Suzanne has become her de facto mom. Meanwhile, Charlie, who’s long dreamed of being a pilot, gets commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps. Although he initially flies reconnaissance missions, he’s soon pulled into harrowing dogfights. Former scullery maid Suzanne is now a respectable stage actress of some acclaim. Jennie, who abandoned her portrait work after Geste’s death, finds employment in a munitions factory; eventually, she becomes an ambulance driver. Suzanne, wanting to contribute to the war effort, later volunteers her house for use as a Red Cross convalescent home for wounded soldiers. The character portrayals, established in the first two books, become effective vehicles for illustrating the war experience this time around. Aviation buffs will find the detailed depictions of early flying machines to be of interest, especially as they’re tweaked and modified throughout the war. Peake vividly portrays Paris life as La Belle Époch gradually gives way to more modern fashion and mores, foreshadowing the coming of the Roaring ’20s; American jazz arrives on the Continent, and Cubism impacts the art scene. The linguistic laxity of Peake’s previous two books once again encumbers his prose: “He tumbling down through branches and hit the ground.” Still, he maintains a brisk momentum, ending the novel with a surprising twist about an ongoing murder mystery.
Love, art, war, and heartbreak mark this often engaging finale.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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